


Stars from Heaven (Fell to Hell)

by Of the League (Serpyre)



Category: Code Name Verity Series - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen, I'm Sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 14:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16019417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serpyre/pseuds/Of%20the%20League
Summary: I’m practically dead, and it’s funny.Or, things that go through Julie's mind, when she's forced into the truck. And what comes through Maddie's, after she shoots her best friend in the head.Two-Shot.





	Stars from Heaven (Fell to Hell)

**Heaven**

 

I’m practically dead, and it’s funny.

 

_The Scottish turncoat bites the dust. Who would’ve known?_

 

I can imagine them, speaking, even now in the middle of a stalemate and the German trucks approach. Their disgusted looks thrown at me; even now, when we’re facing immediate death. _At least I’m not her. That dratted Scottish spy-collaborator. I hope she rots in hell._

 

Why did only the prisoners ever get the Scottish part right? But they’re right, I suppose—I’m a coward, writing the story of a hero. The hero that died landing a spy in France, who then only succeeded in getting herself captured and tortured and dead.

 

It’s sort of funny, thinking about it. Makes me wonder if I’ll get stuck in heaven or hell. Of course practically everyone here thinks I’m condemned to hell—but what shall I say to get myself into heaven? Thrust the confession papers I’ve written to the administrator’s faces or whoever does court-martial in heaven, and make my case: _oh, this may look like a confession, but it’s actually covered in secret code! With instructions on how to murder a bunch of Nazis attached! Who would’ve known!_

 

Maddie would’ve known. It was _her_ story, after all, and she would know better than anyone the parts that were true and false; the headings, riddled with code; the underlined red I said Engel did for me; or the gibberish ''pilot’s code''.

 

She would’ve. But I’ll be as dead as her, but instead of burning in that wreckage I’ll be burning in some corner in hell as a turncoat; traitor; collaborator; or whatever vocabulary they could throw at me.

 

… Maddie was resting in peace, wasn’t she? Maddie’s brave death in a blaze of glory. One so unlike mine. One a hero; mine a coward’s—a collaborator’s timely demise. A turncoat’s deserved death.

 

Those would be the words on history’s lips, and if I’m lucky I’d be repeated by so many and mourned by none but maybe my Mom and Jamie—and even then they’d loathe to grieve for my death. After all, in all manners of speech, I _am_ a traitor.

 

Maddie would know otherwise. There’s no way Maddie wouldn’t’ve noticed the made-up names and carefully curtailed stories. After all, we _did_ make a sensational team.

 

I wished Maddie could read her story. The one I wrote about her. If the British gets ahold of it somehow, the papers piled together like a quick scrapbook, and they manage to decipher the code weaved in the stories, I hope they remember Maddie. As the fumbling, blubbing, determined pilot I’ve known her to be. As my best-friend. As a hero. There’s no doubting that, despite the casual lies I’ve weaved within my respite, the stories were real. It was our memories.

 

And then, I hear sobbing.

 

Quiet, soft sobbing.

 

Recognition flickers through my mind. But it’s slow, unsteady, like a swaying cart on the traintracks ready to topple… and I wonder if I’m dreaming, if my brain’s no longer on the road, if the gunshots I’ve heard have already blasted through my head and I’m in that blissful state of euphoria your brain soothes you through before you die.

 

As the calamity surges through my mind, I hear blubbing.

 

I almost laugh. It’s Maddie’s fitful, anxious blubbing I hear before my death. Of course.

 

But my mouth moves, and I realise I’m no longer dying.

 

Hoarsely, I say: ''Maddie?''

 

There’s nothing, but the German Officer looks at me as if he’s gonna shoot. And I didn’t mind. Didn’t care at all. He felt distant, as everyone else was, fading away like they’re not even there, as if I was waking from some fairytale.

 

But I still hear the blubbing, quietly and clear, five-by-five like a watcher’s warning siren.

 

It’s the euphoria speaking. It has to be.

 

Euphoria. Laughter shakes me—the blissful, godawful euphoria—and I smile and scream at the top of my shaking lungs: ''Kiss me, Hardy! Kiss me, _quick!''_

 

I hope she’s listening. I twist my head round, catching a glimpse of the astonished German’s look, and I almost laugh once more. _Kiss me, Hardy. I know you can._

 

The bliss is too much to take. Two shots ring out in the night; and the blubbing's whisked away with the wind, not a sound in the dark, dark night.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm late to the party, but better late than never, right?
> 
> This was something I had written after I had finished reading Code Name Verity in August - kind of an introspective into what was going on in Julie's mind before she was shot. For those of you wondering about Maddie - there's a second part coming out - I'll be posting it soon.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and let me know what you thought (if anything!)


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